Know Your Place
Saturday, January 7
Is anyone out there still prepared to defend George Galloway? Come on - bring me your defences. I can't wait to hear them. Bring me the one about how he's doing it to bring his views to the unenlightened masses. Explain to me how it's the only way he can reach an unmediated (cough) mass audience without censorship by the Zionist, Islamophobic, capitalist media. Go on. I dare you.
I suppose you have to congratulate the man for his sheer, well, indefatigability. What a brass neck! What breathless, unutterable egotism, beyond the fantsies even of those of us who have long believed he's a charlatan whose only real interest is himself! Just have a look at his personal statement explaining to his increasingly bemused supporters what he's doing hanging about in a hot tub with Michael Barrymore. 'I'm doing it for Palestine ... I'm doing it for the audience.' It's beyond parody, really it is.
Those of you who wish to hear more might like to read this amusing Guardian newsblog, in which various cross people argue the case for and against. Those of you who, like me, think that his incessant cashing-in, self-promotion and dereliction of his parliamentary duties are actually more offensive than funny - especially as his deprived constituents are both paying his wages and not receiving what they elected him for; representation - might like to sign this pledge to report Galloway to the Parliamantary Standards Commissioner.
Still not quite convinced he deserves it? I could spend all day trying to convince you. Quite apart from the public praise for Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi 'intifada' (suicide bombings, in other words, which kill far more Iraqi civilians than occupying soliders); quite apart from Big Brother; quite apart from his having a protester ejected from a recent talk in which he critised the government for doing exactly the same thing to that dissenter at the Labour conference; quite apart from the fact that he has only attended 15% of the votes in the Commons since his election .... quite apart from all this, his worst derelection of duty, and the one that shows him up for what he really is, was his failure to vote on the terrorism bill. Remember that? The Bill that Galloway fiercely opposed (and quite rightly). The one that removed more of our freedoms and gave them to the government. It was won by one vote - Gallloway's. He was busy on a paid speaking tour at the time, promoting himself and filling his wallet, as usual. What more is there to say?
Grrrr.
Posted by Paul at 12:34 PM 
14 Comments
I have no intention of defending Mr Galloway however if you are going to attack him please please attack him with the truth, it is easy enough, instead of fatous drivel.
I watched Mona Charen on C-Span today she spoke as you write and she is an American syndicated columnist. Check her out and realise just how Neocon you sound.
I'd be interested to know where Mr Galloway had someone ejected a la 'New Labour'.
Remember that "sticks and stones may break my bones but, calling mames won't hurt me" a surgeon uses (usually) a knife with precision.
Posted by: 
at 12:30 AM
Fantastic. I knew I'd flush some of you out!
When you say 'fatuous drivel' do you mean 'factually wrong' or do you actually mean 'I don't like hearing this'? Come to that, when you say 'I have no intention of defending Mr Galloway' do you actually mean 'I have every intention of defending Mr Galloway'? I merely ask.
The ejection story is from Private Eye. Check it out yourself. All the other stories are public knowledge and factually correct; please do provide me with some evidence if you believe otherwise.
What I like best about your post is the hilarious suggestion that anyone who attacks a supposedly 'left-wing' figure must, ergo, be right-wing. What wonderfully twisted thinking. It rather puts me in mind of that comment from George Orwell about Stalin - just because the Daily Telegraph sys he's a bad guy, doesn't mean he isn't a bad guy.
Blunt knives are one thing; bludgeons are quite another.
There's a difference between ejecting someone from a talk and ejecting someone heckling at the ruling parties conference...
Not to mention of course that the person allegedly (I don't doubt, but I haven't confirmed it first hand) thrown out from Georgies talk probably wasn't then detained under the Terrorism Act......
And I don't think the first poster said anything about thinking you were sounding neocon because you were attacking Galloway in particular, more the style of your argument maybe?
Posted by: at 12:16 AM
"There's a difference between ejecting someone from a talk and ejecting someone heckling at the ruling parties conference."
Really? What is the difference then?
And come to that, how do you "sound neocon" , other than by expressing neocon political positions (which, needless to say, I haven't done)? I'd be interested to know.
Our anonymous Galloway defender actually made it very clear that I sounded like a "neocon" because I was arguing against Galloway - something which neocons also do. By this logic I could also "sound like Hitler" by espousing vegetarianism, or "sound communist" by criticising capitalism. Come to that, I could also "sound like George Galloway" by attacking the Iraq war, which I have done many a time. Superb reasoning.
Hi Hamalujoe, very perceptive. Hope you come back to see this sometime.
Just listening to Question time on Galloway.
Now a bit of serious political stuff Will (when) will we admit we are already in Iran and have been for months stirring up trouble in the main oil region, which happens to be Sunni.
Unbelievebly Tebbit, sounds far to the left of Bliar and Galloway, oh and Matthew Parris mentions Afghanistan, where we are having a bit of a problem because the Dutch Parliment wont let their troops go.
Aint half kicked up a rumpous about crap NATO and of course linking it to crap UN.
Paul I will send another reply to your comments tommorrow but please read carefully my first post.
Bye
Posted by: at 12:05 AM
Thanks for coming back.
I've read your first post carefully several times, and am looking forward to you expanding upon it, especially the bit about 'sounding neocon.' For many, many years I have listened to people on the left suggest that we should not attack 'our own' for fear of giving ammunition to 'the other side'. This is very dangerous talk, and a moment's thought, or a look at history will show you why.
Galloway, in any case, has never been on 'my side'; he's a nasty piece of work and his BB appearance will do nothing but harm to the anti-war cause. Did you see him last night impersonating a cat? Case closed.
As for Iran: the Western shenanigans here are indeed deeply worrying, and the idiotic Iranian president, which seems to be the Muslim equivalent of Bush when it comes to intelligence and tactical skill, is playing right into their hands. Things are taking a turn for the disturbingly familiar. I know people who say that an invasion of Iran is virtually impossible, with US troops tied up in Iraq; plus Iran is a much bigger proposition in many ways. This wouldn't prevent a big bombing campaign though, and I wouldn't put that past Bush at all.
What a shame that the leader of 'Britain's leding anti-war party' was not on Question Time exposing all this, but was instead in a house with Jodie Marsh and Chantelle, talking to a plant every fifteen minutes to earn enough money to buy a week's food.
Personally, I think GG has a point re getting ideas across to the un-converted.
I have teenagers who are totally switched off by British politics and see me as some sort of dangerous radical for suggesting we're off track as a culture (the culture of mobile phones, trash TV etc) - so I'm getting something wrong.
George Monbiot was recently making a point about how environmentalists portray themselves in the media. How do you get the messages across to the X generation - if just pointing out that we're all toast blah blah worked, then the world would be different but attitudes are if anything more rigid now than when I first got involved in the environmental movement in the early eighties (seemingly halcyon days).
I don't have the answers but they will probably be more bizarre than I can imagine (possibly even MPs on BB).
Roly
Posted by: at 3:18 PM
He might have a point if he was getting any message across other than 'meow'...
you raise a serious point, but I'm less convinced than I was when I was young and fiery-eyed that it's easy to solve. Certainly people like us are failing to change most peoples' minds in a serious way; but the idea that appearing on something like BB could help is, I think, spurious.
I suspect our main problem is not that people don't hear us but that they don't, frankly, care when they do. The kind of change we want to see will involve a lot of people changing their lifestyles, and giving up harmful but pleasurable stuff. I just don't think they will do it. Geldof can't persaude them to save the poor, though he can get them to go to his concerts. Galloway can get them watching him interviewing a goldfish, but he's not going to get them switched on to council house sales.
Not enough people care enough. their lives are comfortable, they have wap phones and x-boxes and frankly, most them don't give a shit - or not enough to act. That's always been our problem, and I just don't know how to get around it. I wish I did.
However many WAP phones they have, people need other people - gut feeling and personal experience make me think our best hopes lie in building strong communities, which is Galloway's paid full-time JOB. He should be doing what we pay him for instead of making cheap tv to publisise himself.
I bet cash is rolling into Channel 4 from every SWP phone in the country.
Who's doing his constituency surgeries while he's away?
A x
Posted by: at 5:04 PM
But even the SWP are embarrassed by Galloway this time! See the statement on their website. Surely it would be in their interests to vote him out so that he doesn't humiliate them further?
Still, this is turning out well; if we can hobble Galloway and the SWP in one fell swoop it'll have been worth Channel Four's time.
I'm not as sure as you Paul about the message being ignored. Many people I know who appear to be leading 'pleasurable' lives are as miserable as hell, not satisfied with all the complexity of modern life, working their nads off to pay off the loans on all the gadgets they didn't really want.
I think the problem at the moment (well one of them!) is that there isn't a viable alternative that people can latch on to. Most people are lazy, not bad, and if there was enough momentum maybe something would happen. But the message has to be pitched right, not doom and gloom lectures but something more positive. As I said, I have no idea how to get that sort of message across (not sexy enough for mainstream media that's for sure....not that they'd be interested anyway).
My guess is that it will take someone very very charismatic (and with a messiah complex no doubt!) to get this thing started......and before you say anything I don't think that's GG but it may be a similar, unconventonal and egotistical character. Someone that the lumpen masses would follow because he's a 'cleb'.
Very depressing all this :o(
Roly
Posted by: at 5:54 PM
Of course Gorgeous George is a bit of a cad (isn't that how you Brits disparage your less well-mannered opposites?), and sure, his ego is boundless, but has anyone ever talked to the rubber stamp Congress in your colony quite the way he did? Or would you go so far as to defend this mad, self-perpetuating War On Terror? How about the War On Drugs? Dare I mention the spread of democracy and the "free" market?
Really, what's the point of attacking the messenger's warts if not to ignore the message? It's not a matter of that silly Right/Left diversion with which so many pundits amuse themselves--it's pretending that American propaganda has any basis in reality. (Or do you lot include yourself in the baggage carriage of the great train of the Yanks' Manifest Destiny?) Here's an idea. Skim this interview, maybe Twain's piece on imperialism, and then come back and tell us what left-wing twaddle it all is: http://www.iefd.org/articles/global_civil_society.php
Vastly curious,
Posted by: 
iridescent cuttlefish at 9:14 PM
